and some kind of help . . .

. . . is the kind of help, we all can do without!

Is that a song you remember from your childhood?  The lyrics are written by Shel Silverstein and sung by Tom Smothers on the Free to Be You and Me album ... we listened to this album over and over as kids!  Anyway, those lyrics (which you can see in full, HERE) came to mind when gathering up the following pictures from binding Joc's wedding quilt this week . . . 

Quality Control Inspector Leia didn't miss a beat ... as soon as I had the quilt top up on the table, she was there too!

Helping me smooth out the wrinkles.

Are you sure there's not a mouse under this thing??

Get this pin lined up . . .

Test for comfort level . . .

Ahhhhhhh ... this is the life.

Total 'catisfaction' guaranteed!!

And the cat hair is free!

And GUESS WHAT!!  Sarah really did do it!  Today, this feline friday post is a linky!!  I'm hooking up with Sarah at Sarah Did It! and her Feline Friday post!  Hurrah!  

:)

(borrowed title:) feline friday . . .

My friend Sarah, from over at Sarah Did It! faithfully posts a weekly "Feline Friday" entry.  I look forward to it all week!  Seriously ... one week when she was taking a blog break, I was really disappointed there was no Feline Friday post.  I miss having my own kitty cats, so I have to get my fill from other sources!

One of my other favorite sources is at Jocelyn's house.  I've shared pics of her cat, Leia, before.  Leia is a cat with definite "cattitude" -- trust me.  But since Ellie's been born, she's come around a bit.  She lets me pet her and even lets me pick her up from time to time -- though not for long.  Anyway, when I was over there this week, Leia was quite fascinated by the whole sewing process. She was so cute I had to pull out my phone and snap my own Feline Friday entry!  I think the pics speak for themselves, so without further ado . . . 

Good job keeping that spool of thread on the machine where it belongs, Leia!!

Happy Friday!

:)

dabble in fabric . . .

Part of yesterday was a "play" kind of day.  I finished my little "Cinderella" pumpkin (as my sister so aptly called it). I really like how it turned out -- especially with the blue marker washed out of it!  

Since I'd stitched it on white (what was I thinking?) and I knew the background I was going to put it into, I decided to add batting and backing and quilt it with a little "bling" (a gold metallic thread).  

And now, tah dah, it's a pillow, ready to head out to my swap partner (who I'm fairly certain does NOT read my blog, at least I hope).  All in all, for a first pillow swap attempt, I'm pleased with it!  The theme was autumn and this speaks autumn to me!  (Especially if you know my affinity for all things pumpkin!)

I also cut and stitched the first set of coasters for Jocelyn.  I did stitch them inside out and then turned them right sides out.  I've got five sets to do, so I may do each one a little differently, just to add a little variety, but I'm pleased with how these look.

They haven't been quilted yet.  Joc had purchased different colored threads to stitch each set of napkins.  I thought it might be fun to use that same color to quilt the coordinating coasters.  I'm headed over there today--I'll finish these up on her machine while I'm there!

Which leads into my last note for the day.  This time three years ago Joc was waking up and enjoying her last morning in her parent's home, before breaking out into pre-wedding frantic busyness!

Happy Anniversary to my sweet little girl and her husband! 

:)

quilty prizes and baby showers . . .

I definitely wanted to share some of the fun goodies I'd received from participating in our guild's challenge and for winning my category.  Our Challenge Chairman did an EXCELLENT job of rounding up wonderful prizes and raffle items for that night!

Games, gadgets, Sulky threads, organic yarn, a book, a sewing kit, a quilt pattern and a terrific bundle of monochromatic fat quarters ... just lots of fun things (that I now have to decide what to do with or figure out where in the sewing bunk they go)!  There was also a $25 gift card to Moe's BBQ!  Whoot!

As if that wasn't enough, my friend Cindy, the owner of Hooked On Quilting (and Sew Much More) dropped off a sweet little surprise for me!  She'd been checking out one of my favorite tea blogs -- Tea With Friends -- and had seen where Angela had featured this darling little tea time tote bag, from TJ Maxx (view post here).  Well do you know that Cindy was in TJ Maxx's, saw the tote and picked up a couple.  And gave one to me!!

Isn't it cute?  I was so touched by her thoughtful gesture!!  I need to do something extra sweet and special for this dear friend!

Over the weekend I attended the most darling baby shower I'd ever been to.  And I'm not just saying that because Jocelyn hosted it, or because I lent a hand.  The theme was pink giraffes, and it was over-the-top darling!!

I didn't have the camera with me, just my phone, so the pictures aren't the greatest, but I had to share a couple.  'Scuse the quality.

Isn't the giraffe cut out perfect?  I projected her on some paper and a dear woodworking friend of ours cut her out with the jigsaw.  She was 44" tall!  (She's a she because the baby we were celebrating is a she, too!)

Joc even ordered a giraffe cookie cutter and had wonderful giraffe sugar cookies to adorn the table, along with lots of other fun goodies.

I told Joc later on that she'd learned all she could from me ... she is now the hostess with the mostess!

:)

design, desire, disgrace . . .

Just a little swap-stitchery-something on my design wall this hot and sultry Monday morning . . . 

I think it will be prettier when the blue marking isn't clashing with the yellow/orange stitching!  It's a from this cute little drawing: 

I love all the scroll work!  I'll frame this up in some yummy autumn fabrics and get it on its way.

I've also got a pile of 15" square tee-shirt cut-ups that I need to give a little zigzag stitch around the edges.  

They will become washable "paper towels" for Joc.

Joc's first major sewing project was making a set of six napkins from each of these lovely fabrics.  Aren't they fun?

I told her I'd take the remnants and make some matching quilted coasters for her to use.  So that's on my 'to do' list.  It shouldn't be tough to cut and quilt them ... but is there an easy way to bind a small project like this?  Should I just buy some bias binding?  Or should I just bite the bullet and make binding for each set of six?  That's thirty coasters!!

And at some point I really really need to take care of this . . .

Isn't it disgraceful?!?  June has definitely taken it's toll on my sewing bunk (not to mention my large number of WIPs)!  I know creative juices will have a hard time flowing while it looks like chaos.  So perhaps--now that things have settled just a bit--I can carve out some time to whip this room back into shape!

And with that in mind, I'd better make a hasty retreat!  You, on the other hand, should head on over to Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times and check out the list of great design wall stuff out there today!

:)

down into the deep south . . .

Late last week, Jocelyn, Ellie and I loaded up the PT Cruiser and headed into the deep south.  Waaaaay down south, to Pearl River, Louisiana!  We headed down for a memorial service for my Great Uncle Bill Fowler, who passed away earlier in the month.  And while we were certainly sad to be saying goodbye to my uncle, we were also excited to be seeing family--some whom Joc (and Ellie, of course) had never met!

We pulled in Thursday evening, went straight to the hotel, and then headed to my cousin's home.  My dad was already there (he flew in earlier in the day) and was happy to hold a Miss Ellie-bellie (who was happy to be out of the stinking car seat)!

Carol gave us a tour of the her home.  It was very lovely!  They'd had very little damage from Katrina -- a few lost trees, but that's it.  Joc and I were both surprised and delighted to be treated to a little sampling of Uncle Bill's owl collection . . . 

The owl is on the Fowler Family crest, which explains why so many of the Fowler family members collect them.

My Great Uncle Frank had also flown in that same day.  Frank was Bill's youngest sibling.  There were eight children, total, and the spread between Frank (#8) and Bill (#6), was ten years.  Hence the six year difference between Frank and my dad -- they grew up more like brothers than uncle and nephew (my dad's dad -- Earl Peabody Fowler - was #3)!  With the passing of Uncle Bill (who'd just celebrated his 90th birthday in September), Uncle Frank is now the patriarch of the Fowler clan -- the last living of his generation.

Whenever you get Fowlers together, you can count on there being some cribbage action!  We played at Carol's house and we played at the hotel.  And Joc and I both played on our phones, too (gotta stay sharp)!  Frank mostly schooled all of us.  I think Dad told me he finally got a win in!

On Friday, Jocelyn (and Ellie), Uncle Frank, Dad and I headed over to Precious Pearls, a tea cafe which happened to be Uncle Bill's favorite little spot to eat.  We even sat at "his" table!  We all had a cup of Crawfish and Corn Bisque, which was *wonderful*!  

The ladies in the cafe were very sweet and had known Uncle Bill well (and in fact were also at his memorial service).  He loved that little place so much, he even had his 90th birthday party there!

At his memorial service, we made it a point to capture five generations of Fowlers:

What a special picture -- treasure -- this will be for me, Jocelyn and Ellie!

This one as well . . . 

At the time, the oldest and the youngest Fowlers members!  How sweet is this picture?!?

A nice shot of dad and Uncle Frank . . . 

And a shot of the Bussell clan.  Carol was Uncle Bill's only child and Mel is her husband. 

Next to Mel is their daughter, Tracy, followed by their son, D.K. (who I served in the Navy with -- we were both stationed in San Diego at the same time), and his daughter Erin.  Sweet family ... this was Joc's first time to meet D.K., Tracy, and Erin.  And my first time meeting Erin, who's very sweet.

And one parting shot of Ellie and my dad.  He loved holding her!

I have to tell you, she was a terrific little girl for the whole trip.  She was a champ on both our drive down and home, and sat through almost the entire memorial service without a peep!  Such a sweet little baby.  :)

The service itself was truly a celebration of a well-lived life.  It was both fun and fascinating to hear my Uncle Frank share his memories of his brother and family.  Joc and I found ourselves really wanting to know more about our family history.  We both want to be able to share those stories with our children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren. 

William "Bill" Knowles Fowler

September 11, 1921 - April 30, 2012

Uncle Bill loved Jesus and loved to talk and especially *sing* about him.  I will much miss his letters and stories and poems.  He was quite a character!  His influence was far-reaching and he will be much missed by many.

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things this week ... perhaps I'll even be successful.

Perhaps not.  LOL!

:)

a totally different day . . .

In that I purposed to fill it one way and actually filled it quite differently.

I had planned for yesterday to be my Occupy Your Sewing Room day, but it ended up being more like an "occupy your kitchen" kind of day. *shrug*

It started on Wednesday, when Todd and I went grocery shopping. I really like ginger snaps, but they didn't have the sugar free kind, so I didn't get any. But I thought about them. A lot. They had the regular kind, but if I'm going to eat something with sugar in it, then it might as well be something *I've* made, right? Anyway, Thursday morning, I've still got a ... taste ... for ginger cookies of some kind. So I turned to google.

Trusty google. I actually ran a search on ginger oatmeal cookies, because the combination just sounded good and I knew I had oatmeal in my pantry. The search netted a couple of interesting prospects, but one in particular caught my eye, from the Cooks Illustrated website. Where it was from was enough to sell me on the cookie. I love, love that magazine. I used to have all the issues and even their annual collections, but that was one that didn't make the RV cut. I was really tickled to find them online! A quick look at the recipe assured me that I had all the ingredients (with a minor sub for sugar plus molasses for the brown sugar it called for), and I cut it in half, because it was better than way. To me, the ultimate test is the raw cookie dough test. If the cookie dough is good, then the cookie is going to be good. The cookie dough for this was GOOD! I thought about just wrapping it up and eating it be the spoonful from the fridge. But I didn't -- I portioned it out, put it in the oven and let it bake. The result? See for yourself . . .

They were soft and chewy on the inside, with just enough 'crispiness' around the edges. The oatmeal did its job of added substance and texture and nutty flavor. The lovely, warm ginger flavor made my mouth smile!

Oh yeah -- they were good still warm, too. :)

After that, since the oven was already heated up, I went ahead and put in a chicken for tonight's chicken & dumplings. I like to cook a whole chicken, pick it, and then cook down the remainders for my broth. Once that was done I put in some venison cutlets to cook and then made hash for this morning's breakfast (which was really good, by the way). Then finally, just in time for Jocelyn's afternoon visit, I made up a saucepan of cocoa.

And so we had cocoa and ginger oatmeal cookies for a lovely afternoon snack on a chilly day. Just perfect!

Isn't she beautiful? I swear she gets more beautiful each time I see her. We are getting so, so close!! Early tomorrow evening is our small "Celebrate Ellie" get together at the Melting Pot. I'd order some special little things for Ellie -- I can't wait to share them with Jocey! And then afterwards, Kim, Joc and I head to see The Nutcracker! A girl's night out -- so fun! I'll be sure to share.

Speaking of sharing, in the event that anyone's interested, I thought I'd share my version of that yummy cookie!

Ginger Oatmeal Cookies

based on recipe from Cooks Illustrated - Published January 1, 1997.

Makes about 28 cookies

Ingredients

• 1 stick unsalted butter (1/4 pound), softened but still firm
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon molasses
  
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats

Instructions

1. Adjust oven racks to low and middle positions; heat oven to 350 degrees. In bowl of electric mixer or by hand, beat butter until creamy. Add sugar and molasses; beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in egg.

2. Mix flour, salt, baking powder, ground ginger, and nutmeg together, then stir them into butter-sugar mixture with wooden spoon or large rubber spatula. Stir in oats.

3. Form dough into twenty-four to twenty-eight 1-inch balls, placing each dough round onto one of two parchment paper–covered, large cookie sheets. Bake until cookie edges turn golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. (Halfway during baking, turn cookie sheets from front to back and also switch them from top to bottom. [editor's note: I didn't do this.]) Slide cookies on parchment onto cooling rack. Let cool at least 30 minutes before serving. [editor's note: good luck on that!]

If you prefer a less sweet cookie, you can reduce the white sugar by one-quarter cup, but you will lose some crispness. Do not overbake these cookies. The edges should be brown but the rest of the cookie should still be very light in color. Parchment makes for easy cookie removal and cleanup, but it’s not a necessity. If you don’t use parchment, let the cookies cool directly on the baking sheet for two minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.

Happy Friday -- enjoy!!

:)

more turkey talk and a little zen . . .

Do you see this . . . ?

It's boring, isn't it? Especially after my pretty red cast that I had last time, with the Alabama "A" on it. This is just ... dull. A pretty color, but dull nonetheless.

So I had an idea. It involved turkeys. It would have involved pumpkins, but we're so close to Thanksgiving, I figured I should stick to turkeys. So I pulled out my fabrics, some fusible webbing, my (new!!!) iron and some felt and here's what I came up with . . .

Kinda cute, right?!

A little tacky glue and voila!! No more boring cast for me!

I also bought a pineapple yesterday, for my darling little turkey head.

Isn't this just AWESOME?!!?

Mr. Turkey Head agrees ... a pineapple is so much better than borrowing Mr. Cardinal's body!

Mr. Cardinal agrees too.

So a turkey day and a zentangle evening! Here's a little look into our introduction to zentangle at last night's guild meeting. This is the little kit that was handed out to us:

The 8.5X11 sheet of paper had examples of different modes of zentangle. Pretty cool. Plus a micron fine point pen, a soft charcoal pencil, four drawing tiles, and a tortillon (which is the long, skinny white thing that looks sort of like a homemade cigarette). Oh, and that piece of paper that had all the different zentangle doodles on it? Cut it out and fold it on the lines and it made an icosahedron, which looks like this:

Source.

Here's a closeup of the tortillon. It's a smudger. Seriously.

No really, it smudges. You'll see.

Our first step was to put a dot in each of the four corners and then connect them with a line. This was our 'border'.

Then she had us draw a big loop. There was no right or wrong way, though she did give us guidelines. Once we'd drawn that, we set down our pencils and picked up the pen.

This design was called 'pepper'.

Then she had us do this little criss-crossing opposing lines thing.

Next we did a 'mooka' design (the one that looks like hearts, sort of) and then 'printemps' which was a bunch of closed spirals.

After that we took our tortillon and smudged the lines. See how it gave it dimension? It's pretty cool.

This is Jocelyn's . . .

Hers looked GREAT! She was a natural, that's for sure. I was so glad that not only she picked me up and brought me, but that she stayed and enjoyed herself! We were sitting at a table with a pretty rowdy group of older quilters. At one point we were laughing so hard (and loud) that people were looking at us!! Joc leaned over to me and said, "Quilters have big personalities, don't they?!" LOL!

So the two of us followed the same directions, but look how different they turned out!

So here's our two and two from the ladies sitting opposite us . . .

Isn't that wild?!? We really did have a blast!! The card on the top right belongs to my dear friend Jane, of Grandmama's Stories. She joined Joc and I (and the Stitcher's Group) for dinner last night and then joined the guild, too! I am so excited to have a quilty *and* bloggy friend in the guild with me! And I was so blessed to have my beautiful girl with me too (especially since I wouldn't have been there if she hadn't come and gotten me)!

And . . . that's zentangling! I've got a couple more blank tiles I'm going to play with. The 'mooka' was pretty cool -- it was a lot like stippling -- as is the 'amaze' and the 'echoism'. I can see where quilters could tie zentangling into the quilting and even into an embroidery methodology. It was fascinating *and* fun!!

So that's that . . . and this is Friday -- have a GREAT one!!

:)